When Trebor Scholz asked on his Twitter stream if someone can recommend a good video on the history of B92, I realised not only that there’s no such representative video, but also that Youtube B92 account was suspended and the video was moved to Blip.tv. Anyway, I’ve exchanged some links and ideas with Trebor, browsing through the web history, the online pages and found some archive of B92 correspondences and BBS trays from the 90′s that could be useful for his class.

Then he asked me if I could be a guest speaker in the form of iChat lecture/conversation and record online video for the students, and I thought: well, why not? In general, I don’t like to go back to history events, especially back to the 90′s but then in the context of web activism I had professional urge to act and give the feedback. The outcome is the video I’ve recorded on the Seesmic for the students, where I was dwelling through the Internet history of b92 Opennet and BBS’s, forums, and how the citizens used online media to undermine the current regime, and all social, political, economic turbulences that have marked the 90′s. Initially planned 10 minutes of the video talk extended into 18 min of my scattered thoughts (was recording at 2 am European time, after the tweet-up, so I could deliver it before Wednesday’s class) and I realised there are lot of things to say not only about the online history of B92 but the birth of the citizen journalism in Serbia as the major point in social media in the 90′s.  In Trebor’s presentation – slides you can find out more about above said, the Social Media and War in Serbia, as a part of his Global Internet Activism series.

This Monday, a small group of Twitter enthusiasts got together in the very downtown of Belgrade to meet, interact, chat (longer than 140 characters), and have fun.  Actually, last week I’ve asked on Twitter if anyone is interested to meet up, and then set up the date and time. I’ve managed a reservation near the Politika building, and people started to gather.  Few of us appeared since it was some national holiday and many people were off town, but it was definitely nice to meet some of the new Twitterers and talk about social media, issues on Web, micro-blogging and life. All of us are in the information technologies, either programming, marketing, blogging, journalism, online media and it was easy and interesting to communicate on some things from different points of view. Check out some of the photos of this cool Serbian Twitter crew.

Creative Commons, which produces licenses implemented in 50 different jurisdictions until now, including  Serbian project, on December 15th  celebrates its 6th Birthday around the world. Regarding this occasion, Creative Commons Serbia, Wikimedia Serbia,  and Free Software Network Serbia, organises at the Faculty of Mathematics, of the University of Belgrade (room 718, 4th floor) on Monday, December 15th at 6 p.m. – presentation and debate about free software and free scientific, education, artistic and media production to emphasise the importance of free licensing in information society. I’m inviting you tomorrow to join CC birthday world wide celebration, and embrace open source.

Despite the fact that ‘Belgrade and Beyond’ blog exists in other form {digital serendipities}, I am still writing  about interesting events and electronic resources on Belgrade, Serbia. For those of you who are not familiar and you happen to reside in Belgrade for some reason, this information may be valuable to you.

Belgrade Foreign Vistors Club (FVC) presents the online community for foreigners in Belgrade, created by  Jonathan Davis. Beside Belgrade FVC there is Belgrade Foreign Visitors Club Wiki, an online information resource for foreign residents and visitors to the city of Belgrade, where you can find high quality community edited information resources and guided directories with useful links.  Also, check out Belgrade FVC forum where you can interact with other members, Twitter feed, and there is Facebook group informing users with current events, reviews, recommendations. I hope you’ll find this information and links useful especially if you are planning a trip to Belgrade or maybe to move here.

Today is World AIDS Day. Few days ago one photo made a confusion among us – from Twitter, FriendFeed interaction [me likes FriendFeed more and more], to Bora’s blog where discussion on the action of Serbian Ministry of Health has moved. Today, bumper, bumper was jumping and staring at me from all new-stands in the city.

Other than that: Pownce is closing and moving to Six Apart! Those of you who have used this micro-blogging service, you can export files, message until December 15th, as the main Pownce website is closing down two weeks from today.

Today is Cyber Monday, but not in Europe. I hope you found good discounts for gadgets and nice computers. And I still need laptop!

to be continued…

…but I’d really like to receive Twitter updates on my mobile device as it was from year and a half ago when I could get sms directly to my mobile inbox: no browser, no applications, just plain and simple receiving text messages from the people I followed and sending directly from my mobile operator. I really miss Twitter with sms for a long time:

Sending updates to Twitter while you’re away from your computer makes things much more interesting. It’s all done through text messages (aka “SMS”), which you probably use all the time anyway, so there’s not much to learn.Twitter doesn’t charge anything for this, but be sure to know what your text plan looks like with your wireless carrier. If you use your mobile in Canada, The United States, or India you can also receive updates via SMS. You can text “OFF” to stop receiving and “ON” to start again.

Now the only information I have got when I tried to update with new mobile number was:

I am not Twitter addict but I’d really like to receive sms’s on my mobile device: is there a way for some European countries to make this come true? Through other services, e.g. Jaiku? What is your experience?

http://www.gapingvoid.com

Recently, I’ve read in media  the results of the survey by “xy” marketing agency (don’t want to advertise them here) who did research of the usage of Facebook in Serbia. This is my response and strong argument against  superficial output without research corpus statements of the author, agency, and unverified data published. I loathe these strong unverified allegations that appear officially. What it was about?

All Serbian media published the ‘results’ of commercial marketing agency’s survey about the popularity of the “sites for youth” in Serbia and they came to conclusion that the most popular are Facebook and My Space.  Beyond this general data, there are other things here I want to share with you, those they have ‘found out’. According to them, their target group was youth, age 18-25:  30%  of the examined population use everyday Internet and 61% of them have Facebook profile, and 37% have profile on My Space.

“They [youth] see Facebook as serious web site which enables them to communicate with people who live far away, to find soul-mates, and to have fun there. They are also emphasizing that those who don’t have Facebook profile – are ‘out’ ” (translated from Serbian, they are not cool, my remark).

Furthermore, the author of this research says that young people are noticing lot of fake profiles and (re)presentations, and Facebook is the reason they communicate less face to face, and therefore conclusion: they have negative Facebook opinion, privacy issues,  and connotation including the Facebook addiction. These three sentences on Facebook was everything we got from ‘research of marketing agency. Yuck!

Now I have to say something and respond to this kind lump of smattering, no survey corpus, non reliable conclusions.

First, this kind of surveys are ‘ordered’ from marketers or agency for certain [non - academic] purposes not to mention that companies of this kind try to demand and fence their users in certain boxes and or pre-ordered groups. Why? There is huge list of e-market interests in Serbia for future (re)shaping their users and making fertile e-ground for new ‘projects’ and investments.

Second, on this survey’s ‘results’ published in all Serbian media:  this unverified data should be kept under huge question mark and reserve from several reasons. There is no corpus of the research – no numbers of people included in this survey: what Serbian networks? Is it University network? High School network (there are no high school networks created on Facebook in Serbia, in general, dear agency)? No-network search of the users? All Serbia network? Methodology? Data? Charts?

For your information, including today: there are 143,891 people in Serbia network, and further – there are 1,619 people in the University of Belgrade network. Does this mean that the author and the agency did survey on  10,000 people? Or maybe 1000? We will never find out that. Did they send their questionnaires to classmates from high school, university, colleagues, ex housemates, lost friends so they have qualitative kind of output? There is nothing in this survey  that would show or notify us about indications regarding research (where is summarized corpus with quantitative and qualitative data?).

As above mentioned privacy issues: they are talking about privacy issues but they didn’t mention the most important fact that those teens and youth are exposing their FB profiles to the public along with their photos from parties, open for public. I got feedback data (youngsters) in Serbia network, as i was noticing and reporting to some of them that their profiles can be seen to everyone (along with photos).  From my direct talk with them, they didn’t know that their profile is exposed (not literate enough to find and adjust privacy settings) and this is the most often case with the group of undergrads who simply was not familiar with privacy mechanisms.  They were in shock (“oh my god!” reactions, and “I thought it was ‘friend only”) “,  which indicated that this small sample of youth in Serbia are self-aware that Facebook is network !read Network! for gathering with friends with whom they know from real life and re-establish connections (already existing) with, primarily, high school mates, university colleagues, etc.  They don’t care about strangers  or unknown people pending on ‘friend requests’ list. Of course there will be ‘collectors’ of strangers and friends for such purposes (we have them in everyday life), but finding soul-mates? I’m afraid , dear agency, that Serbian youth are gathered around Facebook for different reasons but finding soul-mates. They are soul-mating on other places.

“Conclusion there is negative Facebook connotation including the Facebook addiction” is hideous and contradictory if we have in mind above numbers (61% have Facebook profile and is the most popular site). If Facebook is such a bad and negative social network site, then why would many thousands of Serbian population get connected, socializing  with their friends, colleagues, classmates and communicate with them on daily basis? They are on Facebook to hang out with their friends and classmates in pre-existed relationships from real life, or re-connecting with those they’ve lost contact with, or connecting with their allies they never met face to face. There is huge University of Belgrade community on Facebook who talk about upcoming exams on the boards, exchange information, how-where-to find that book for exam, info on conferences, projects, etc.

Few years back, when I was doing research for my Master thesis – the existing surveys of Telecom (national telecommunication company) or CePIT(center for the research in Information-communication technologies) , have got not only explained methodology and all important basic data from their research, but also they’ve created user-friendly charts as you’d read at any e-journal, magazine out there. Open accessed and published to all media.

Said that, I am strongly arguing against this kind of public superficial announcements in media with suspicious outputs as millions of people in Serbia are reading them and (probably) taking them for granted, without having in mind the facts (Serbia network on Facebook as well as the other networks -university, work, region), social-technological context, survey corpus, criteria, purpose.  Question everything, question me!

On socio-ethno-anthro context of “you are  noone if you are not on Facebook” in Serbia,  I will write in the upcoming texts.